Nielsen Announces Launch of National Television Out-of-Home Measurement Service

 

OCTOBER 24, 2016 PRESS RELEASE OF THE WEEK

    

Today, Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN) announced that it plans to leverage its Portable People Meter (PPM) technology and panelists to measure out-of-home viewing for national television clients. Clients that subscribe to this service will receive audience estimates that combine in-home television viewing, based on Nielsen’s National TV ratings panel, with out-of-home viewing based on its PPM panels.  

“ESPN worked with Nielsen 20 years ago to pioneer the first iteration of out-of-home TV measurement. This new advancement using passive, real-time technology represents a significant leap forward. We know that ESPN is viewed virtually anywhere there is a screen – from sports bars to gyms, hotels and the workplace. While C3, C7 and beyond are useful to measuring catch-up viewing in the home, this new service gives us the ability to capture out-of-home viewing precisely as it happens, and helps us double down on the power and delivery of live sports, while transacting on new, valuable audience segments for advertisers,” said Artie Bulgrin, Senior Vice President, Global Research & Analytics, ESPN.”

The service will provide both program and commercial ratings (C3/C7) for live through live + 7 days of time-shifted viewing. Nielsen expects to launch this new service in April 2017 with data effective January 2017. Data back to September 2016 will be added shortly after launch. Nielsen’s launch of its National TV Out-of-Home Measurement Service is another example of the company’s commitment to measuring the total audience everywhere and on every platform consumers watch content.

The use of the PPM device, which panelists carry with them wherever they go, enables Nielsen to measure TV viewing that occurs in places like restaurants, bars, waiting rooms, and airports. The out-of-home viewing will be based on data from over 75,000 PPM panelists across 44 local markets, enabling Nielsen to project out-of-home viewing in over half of U.S. population.

“As a leading media company with a diverse portfolio of brands, Turner recognizes that today’s audience measurement requires constant innovation to capture the full scope of audience behavior. For brands like CNN and Turner Sports with huge and valuable out-of-home audiences, we need to be able to measure consumption regardless of the platform, screen or location,” said Howard Shimmel, Chief Research Officer, Turner. “In collaboration with Nielsen, we were first-to-market using PPM technology for custom out-of-home solutions for CNN. Nielsen’s new National TV Out-of-Home Measurement Service will help us drive these capabilities forward.”

Nielsen plans to provide subscribing clients with individual day data for program and commercial audience estimates on a weekly basis. While this new offering will launch as a standalone service, Nielsen plans to incorporate out-of-home viewing directly into its currency national television ratings at a later stage.

“Measuring where consumers watch content, regardless of platform and location, is at the core of Nielsen Total Audience, and this includes out-of-home viewing,” said Sara Erichson, Executive Vice President, Nielsen Client Solutions and Audience Insights. “While consumers have always watched TV outside the home, that viewing has not been measured. This new measurement enables both buyers and sellers to understand the incremental reach of advertising messages.”

Gartner Predicts 30% Of Searches Without A Screen In 4 Years

• by Laurie Sullivan, Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, Yesterday, 1:30 PM

About 30% of searches will be done without a screen by 2020. Technology such as Google Assistant for Home, Amazon Alexa for Echo, chatbots and software development kits from Microsoft, Soundhound and others will make this possible.

The Gartner predictions, released Tuesday for 2017 and beyond, show a fundamental shift in the way consumers will find information. The trends examine three fundamental effects of digital innovation: experience and engagement, business innovation, and the secondary effects that result from increased digital capabilities.

In the world of Web search, when Amazon Echo doesn't immediately have an answer to a voice query, Microsoft Bing steps in to provide the response.  

The Bing knowledge and action graph allows Microsoft to provide an answer to a query rather than a set of answers like the 10 blue links on a screen.

What happens when the screen disappears in the case of Amazon Echo and Alexa? Advertisers need to start thinking about places outside of the search box where interactions could occur with consumers. In some cases it takes the feel of traditional search advertising and in other cases it will allow them to go directly into an action, Ryan Gavin, GM of search and Cortana marketing at Microsoft, told Search Marketing Daily during a discussion in September.

Gartner analysts predict that voice interactions will eventually overtake typing a search query. By eliminating the need to use your hands and eyes for browsing, "vocal interactions" become the utility for Web sessions to find content while multitasking — walking, socializing and exercising.

About 20% of brands will abandon their mobile apps by 2019. Gartner says that many brands are finding that the level of adoption, customer engagement and return on investment (ROI) delivered by their mobile applications are significantly less than expected, according to Gartner. Some will replace them with chatbots, interacted voice-responsive snippets of artificial intelligence.

By 2020, algorithms will alter the positive behavior of more than 1 billion global workers, according to Gartner analysts.

Humans can become "emotionally charged and factually drained, causing them to be irrational," per Gartner. Algorithms can alter that behavior in a positive way by augmenting their intelligence with the large collective memory bank containing knowledge that has been socialized.

It may sound a little creepy, but Gartner analysts believe this will help workers stay informed, keeping information at their fingertips. Gartner calls it "just-in-time knowledge" to objectively complete the task, but also to better appreciate life as it unveils.

Stop Counting Wrong and Learn to Love Independent Measurement

By RICHY GLASSBERG OCTOBER 19, 2016 GROUPM ARCHIVES

14 7 63  

Everything you think you know about digital attribution today is wrong. Your fifteen-year old desktop solution set has been invalidated almost overnight by the massive shift to mobile; as of 2016, 26.4% of time withall media (including TV and print) is spent on mobile devices. That's well over half of all time spent with digital. Because of this, advertisers must reboot their approach to how they measure and attribute conversions. Buyers and sellers of media need independent measurement partners to provide trustworthy, reliable data about the path-to-conversion in a mobile first world. But as an industry, we've become complacent and too accepting of legacy systems, conflicting ownership interests and walled gardens.

How did we get here? We started off on the wrong foot 15-plus years ago by counting clicks and relying on the cookie as a "Willy Wonka golden ticket." The challenges compounded massively in the last two years when agencies and marketers tried to migrate desktop measurement systems to mobile. Click-through rates are fractions of a percent, cookies don't work in mobile apps, and people don't consistently log in to every environment. And worst of all, many of the measurement systems are now owned by the biggest sellers of media -- making it impossible to independently validate performance.

Broadcast, cable, magazine publishing and radio all have independent third-party measurement and verification partners to hold them accountable. So why are we allowing the largest media owners to grade their own effectiveness in digital?

The idea behind independent attribution is simple: Digital media allows us to know exactly which impressions a person saw along the path to purchase. Marketers must be able to look across all of its buyers and see exactly which ads contributed to that purchase; when marketers and agencies have that data in aggregate, they can make better decisions about their media investments.

Attribution models need to be built on reliable data. Marketers dream of models that capture the contribution of all media, but that dream starts with accurate measurement of the discrete inputs.

This means the digital data must be reliable -- and in order for the digital data to be reliable, marketers need to:

1. Make sure they are appropriately identifying mobile devices.
2. Make sure they are appropriately linking mobile devices and desktop devices.

Why You're Measuring Mobile Wrong

Desktop solutions don't work in mobile. Cookies, the foundation of desktop measurement, only work in a fraction of mobile environments -- and most importantly, they don't work in mobile apps.

Often a consumer sees an ad in an app, like Pandora or Yelp, and then goes on to convert in a mobile web environment. Without cookies, desktop solutions cannot follow the user from the app to the mobile web -- and therefore won't count the conversion. Desktop solutions miss around 80% of attributable conversions on mobile due to this blindness between mobile web and mobile app.

There is also a misunderstanding that device IDs can be used in place of cookies. While device advertising IDs are accurate, they are not always passed back from app publishers to ad servers -- and they are never captured in mobile web where most conversions occur.

Why Login-Based Measurement is A Myth

Do you use your Google or Facebook authentication consistently to access every other app or browser environment across all of your devices?

Persistent logins sound great because they guarantee a one-to-one match. But they fall down when it comes to linking multiple environments on mobile. Every app on your phone is a walled garden, and those login services can only link environments to a single user where they're in use.

Changes in consumer behavior make login-based measurement less reliable for desktop, as well. For example, according to year-end 2015 results, over half of Facebook users only log-in on mobile -- creating significant measurement gaps around desktop activity. In the real world, people infrequently and inconsistently log in.

While these identification methods work for targeting ads, they miss the mark entirely when attempting to provide an objective evaluation of how impressions lead to an action. Those targeted ads may be only one piece of a person's complex path to purchase.

What Advertisers Can Do

Walled gardens and media owners want to grade their own homework. It benefits their businesses, regardless of whether their advertisers succeed.

There are a few steps advertisers can take to ensure they effectively gauge the performance of their mobile and cross-device campaigns.

Advertisers need independent, neutral, trustworthy third-parties to make sure they're getting what they pay for and to know that their mobile media is working. Independent measurement empowers agencies to make educated buys, keeps media owners honest, and lays the foundation for a sustainable ecosystem.

1. Separate your measurement from inventory and targeting. Find independent partners to evaluate the effectiveness of your media partners.
2. Choose measurement solutions that make sense in the context of human behavior. When 86% of time on mobile is spent in-app (according to Yahoo/Flurry analytics), your measurement partners need to be able to see across app environments.
3. Make sure you're getting mobile right before you move to cross-device measurement. Accurate identity and measurement on mobile must be the foundation for any reliable cross-device insight.

The opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet, Inc. management or associated bloggers.

How Mobile Millennials Buy: Banking 74%, App Purchases 53%, Music 51%, Retail 44%

by Chuck Martin, Staff Writer Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016 Like most consumers, almost all millennials shop in person, but they also turn to their smartphones for all kinds of commerce. Millennials in the U.S. who shop in person do it because of a sense of immediacy and the ability to touch the product and in many cases see if it fits, based on a new global study. The majority (66%) of millennials overall shop in a store rather than online due to being able to get the product right away and 66% because they are able to see, touch and try the merchandise. The study is based on a survey of 2,800 millennials across seven markets (U.S., U.K., Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Hong Kong and Malaysia) conducted by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. More (77%) of millennials in the U.S. have that sense of immediacy and 74% want to be able to see and try the merchandise. However, American millennials also are turning to theit smartphones for a range of transactions, most notably banking. Here is where U.S. millennials conduct transactions via mobile: 74% -- Banking, financial 53% -- Online, mobile app purchases 51% -- Music, video downloads 44% -- Retail purchases This is consistent with numerous studies that find most shoppers make their final purchase in a physical store, even though mobile devices are used throughout the entire Mobile Shopping Life Cycle. For U.S. consumers, activities that involve higher risk, such as opening a bank account, are done in person. But mobile is involved in conducting activities in a number of them. Here’s where millennials use mobile: 38% -- Check order status 26% -- Get or reset a password 23% -- Renew a subscription 15% -- Open an account with a retailer 7% -- Open a credit card account 5% -- Open an account with a bank In yet another area that mobile payments may be being held back, many millennials are not feeling confident that they can trust those who provide them. For example, a large majority (87%) of American millennials use cash, 78% a debit card, 77% a credit card, 55% a gift card but only 12% a mobile wallet. The largest country use of mobile wallets is Mexico at 19% of millennials. Millennials also have a sense of distrust with retailers and communications companies, along with payment providers. Here’s where U.S. millennials have no trust at all: 26% -- Mobile wallets 26% -- Retailers 22% -- Telecom service providers 13% -- Financial institutions So there still looks like some effort and time will have to be involved for millennials to fully embrace mobile commerce across the board. It’s also not only one concern that millennials have. Here’s a breakdown of just some the statements around identify or debit or credit information being compromised: 69% -- I worry about having my identify stolen in a data breach 69% -- When companies ask for my personal information, I think twice before providing it 67% -- I worry about having my credit card information stolen 65% -- I worry about having my identity stolen through online, app and mobile activities 54% -- I am required to remember too many passwords 54% -- I would be willing to provide a summary of my shopping habits in exchange for free products or services 36% -- I would be willing to provide access to my geographic location in exchange for targeted goods or services These issues sound pretty much the same as those facing the masses.

Foot Traffic To Dealers Reveals Trends

By Tanya Gazdik, Staff Writer Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016

Every marketer wishes they had a crystal ball to help them predict the future, or even to make sense of the present.    Foursquare thinks they might have the answers via foot traffic data. Before your one eyebrow shoots up in skepticism, keep in mind that Foursquare has used proprietary foot traffic data to accurately predict Chipotle's earning's drop in Q1 and detect the decline in visits to Trump-branded properties.    Foursquare analyzed visit data from Foursquare city guide and Swarm check-in apps to uncover consumer insights around people who visit auto dealerships. The company looked at both active check-ins as well as passive visits (for users who enable background location). Data is always aggregated and anonymous and it is normalized against the U.S. Census to ensure that it is representative.   Foot traffic to luxury dealers makes up 16% of total auto dealership visits, mass market dealers make up 64% and third-party resellers make up 19%, according to the company, which is presenting at the J.D. Power summit this week.    The data is broken down by automaker. It reads a little like the copy on dating profiles, where users list their likes and preferences and qualities— or at least the ones they pretend to have. Unlike those consumers, Foursquare has no hidden agenda.   Nissan has an even 50/50 male-to-female ratio and ranks the highest market visit share for ages 35-44 (19%) but their biggest market is 55+ (37%). The brand’s customers are more likely than the average Foursquare and Swarm users to visit dry cleaners (40%), smoothie shops (32%) and pet stores (14%). They over-index on tastes like fried seafood (102%) and hibachi (100%)  Shoppers who visit a Nissan dealership also visit Toyota, Ford and Jeep.   Moving on to Toyota, visitors to that dealership love trails (89%), outdoor seating, and Vietnamese food. People who visit Toyota are also more likely to visit soccer fields (14%) & gymnastics gyms (24%), Bank of America (24%) compared to Chase which is only (10%) and USPS (10%). People who go to Toyota also visit Lexus (parent company), Nissan and Mazda. No shocker there.    As for Subaru, demographic of users tend to skew male (highest out of the 5 mass market dealerships). People who go to Subaru are 60% more likely than the average Foursquare and Swarm user to visit an acupuncturist and also over-index at climbing gyms and ski areas. People who got Subaru also visit Volkswagen, Mazda and Kia.   Hyundai visitors tend to index high for fishing spots (90%), wings joints (12%), recording studios (62%), summer camps (39%), casinos (130%). The brand’s shoppers also visit Mazda, Kia, Cadillac and Nissan. On to General Motors, a few of its brands reveal the customers’ unique habits which seem like you’d expect from a U.S.-based brand.  Chevrolet, has one of the highest 55+ demographic compared to other mass market companies (similar to Toyota). They over-index in a very big way at Tim Hortons (198%). Compared to other mass market dealership — they don’t really shop at Whole Foods (not even in the top 30 visited chains). They over-index at Meijer (119%) and Home Depot (20%). Chevrolet visitors are more likely to visit forests (93%), hunting supply shops (76%), motorcycle shops (75%) and fishing spots (74%). Consumers who shop at Chevrolet also visit GMC, Cadillac and Ford.   Across the hall at the automaker’s luxury division, Cadillac categories indicate that this group is heavy shoppers in the construction industry with construction and landscaping index high (88%), warehouses (63%) and shipping stores (55%). This group index high for “rustic” (80%) and items like corned beef and beer cheese (the image of a person in a giant Cadillac Escalade eating a corned beef sandwich quickly comes to mind.) People who visit Cadillac also go to Chevrolet, GMC, Lexus, Kia and Jeep — a pretty wide variety of brands.    Of all the luxury car brands that Foursquare analyzed, Land Rover/Jaguar skews the highest for visitors between the ages of 45-54 with 16% of their total visitors in that age range. People who visit Land Rover or Jaguar index high for tuna tartare (124%), cigars (111%) and strip steak (129%) and Michelin stars (121%). They over-index at Pilates gyms (81%), golf courses (58%), baggage claims and travel lounges (93%). They are more likely than average Foursquare and Swarm users to visit leather good stores (111%) and club houses (147%). People who go to Land Rover/Jaguar also visit Porsche, Mini and Mercedes-Benz Audi. Mercedes-Benz is similar to Land Rover/Jaguar in that they also have a higher end taste for food such as Michelin stars (138%), spas (21%) and prix fixe menus (87%). They are more likely to visit real estate offices (73%), tailor shops (70%) and nightlife spots 68%.They love tennis (61% more likely to visit a court) and surf spots (20%) and travel often (42% more likely to visit travel lounges). They are over-index at embassies/consulates (46%). People who visit Mercedes-Benz dealership also visit Porsche, Audi, BMW, Lexus and Volkswagen.   Infiniti, on the other hand, is going to get some jealous looks since it skews towards younger visitors. 39% of their total visits are ages 25-34. The brand’s customers prefer thin crust pizza, tea lemonade, pedicures and concerts. They visit Cuban restaurants, daycares, private schools and spiritual centers. People who visit Infiniti also go to Lexus, Acura, BMW, Audi and Nissan.   It’s hard to say how Infiniti knowing that its customers prefer thin-cut pizza with an Arnold Palmer will help it sell more vehicles. But since marketers are unlikely to turn down gift data, I’m sure they’ll come up with some use for it.

C3 Impressions Grow, Ad Loads Rise

• by Wayne Friedman, Yesterday, 10:27 AM
• Recommend (1)

Total commercial TV impressions among 18-49 viewers continue to climb as a result of still-rising commercial advertising loads for most TV networks.

C3 impressions (the average commercial rating plus three days of time-shifted viewing) among 18-49 viewers grew 3.2% in the third quarter of this year over the same period a year ago, according to analysis from Pivotal Research Group.

Comcast’s NBCUniversal commanded the largest C3 share of impressions among 18-49 viewers in September for a TV network group -- 15.1%, the same as the previous year. 

Viacom was next at 14.9%, down from 16%; Time Warner remained the same at 11.6%; Walt Disney slipped to 11.3% from 11.4%; Fox was at 8.3%, down from 8.4%; CBS was at 6.3%; Discovery, 6.2%; Scripps Networks Interactive, 4.8%, and AMC Networks. 2.7%.

In September, total commercial advertising loads grew on average to 10.9 minutes/hour versus 10.7 minutes for September 2015 --  up from 10.5 minutes in September 2014.

Viacom continued to be the leader among all TV network groups for advertising loads: 14.9 minutes of advertising time per hour, up from 14.8 minutes in September 2015. Scripps Network Interactive was next at 13.6 minutes, down from 13.7 minutes.

AMC Networks and Discovery posted the largest gains in advertising time per hour -- to 12.4 minutes (up from 11.8 in September 2015) and 10.0 (up from 9.8) respectively.

Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Time Warner both remained the same -- at 11.1 minutes and 9.0 minutes, respectively.

Fox was at 10 minutes per hour (up from 9.8 minutes), followed by Disney at 8.3 minutes (from 8.2 minutes); and CBS at 7.3 minutes (from 7.2 minutes).

National Broadcast Political Advertising Spend - Updated Daily

by Philip Rosenstein, October 17, 2016, 12:21 PM Recommend (3) Updated daily, MediaPost now offers a DMA-level overview of Republican, Democratic and nonpartisan broadcast TV spending across the country. As we quickly approach election day, we can assess which markets are most contested and most interesting. Check in daily for updated totals in the country's most active markets. In partnership with Advertising Analytics.

Presented by Advertising Analytics, LLC

Millennials Would Pay For Better TV Program Search

• by Wayne Friedman, 5 hours ago
• Recommend (3)

Millennials have little patience when they can’t find the TV content they want, and in general, would “pay” for better search.

TiVo says 54% will drop a show they have previously watched because it is too difficult to access content. Millennials -- those born between 1981 and 1995 -- spend 32 minutes a day searching for content.

In contrast, “boomers” -- those born between 1945 and 1964 -- will only dump a TV show 17% of the time. Overall the U.S. average of all TV viewers is 36%.

Research says 55% of U.S. Millennials would “pay” to simply search across all platforms -- 33% for all U.S. consumers and 8% for boomers.

TiVo was recently bought by the company formerly called Rovi Corp., which licenses electronic TV program guides/software for set-top boxes, TVs and other devices.

TiVo says Millennials watch TV and video content, on linear platforms or streaming -- 6.2 hours a day versus an overall average of 5.6 hours. Boomers watch/stream 4.9 hours a day.

The company's research came from a subset of U.S. results via an online survey of 5,500 pay TV and OTT (over the top) subscribers across seven countries worldwide. Some 2,500 interviews were completed in the U.S., and 500 interviews completed in each additional country, including the UK, France, Germany, China, Japan and India.

New IAB Standards Promise Major Ad Shakeup

• by Erik Sass, Staff Writer @eriksass1, October 11, 2016, 4:55 PM
• Recommend (12)

The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s new formats and standards for ad units will have a major, positive impact on user experience -- helping to stem the tide of ad blocking, according to Jeff Burkett, vice president of advertising innovation at the USA Today Network. He previewed some of the new rules for the audience at MediaPost’s Publishing Insider Summiton Tuesday.

But the process may not be painless for publishers, which face the loss of some of the most common ad units.

The proposed standards --&nb sp;released by the IAB on September 26 and open for public comment until November 28 -- are intended to conform with the IAB’s own guidelines for “LEAN” ads, introduced to head off the ad blocking threat.

The LEAN guidelines call for lightweight, non-intrusive ads with full consumer control.

These standards are embodied in the IAB’s portfolio of proposed ad units, which include display ads and native ads as well as new types of content experiences, such as emoji ads, 360-degree image and video ads, virtual reality ads and augmented reality ads.

In addition to producing a better user experience, the new flexible ad formats are intended to make it easier for publishers and advertisers to deliver ads easily across multiple devices and screen sizes.

One of the main changes is the demise of “countdown” ads, which force consumers to wait a certain amount of time before they can close the ad. Burkett noted that the IAB’s rule means that ads must engage consumer attention right away, adding that this could present some complications for advertisers repurposing TV ads, which are often not designed to be engaging from the first second.

The proposed standards would also ban pop-up ads that appear automatically, as well as fixed-size expansion ads that cover up part of the adjacent editorial content.

Conversely, anchored, user-expandable mobile ads, which the consumer can choose to open or close at will, are acceptable, as are expandable interstitial ads and expandable full-screen ads -- the common element obviously being consumer control.

In addition, “mobile adhesion” banner ads, which follow the text as the user scrolls, are allowed as long as the aspect ratio doesn’t exceed 3:1. Ads that expand automatically while the user is scrolling are acceptable, provided they don’t block content, have a clear way to close them from the beginning of the ad, and don’t automatically shrink again after the user finishes scrolling down, dislocating the content upwards.

Slowdown In Internet Usage Could Change Digital Ad Strategy

• by Wayne Friedman, 8 hours ago

For the first time, total Internet users' minutes has slowed to single-digit percentage gains -- which could signify a major change in the way digital ad media is sold.

Total minutes slowed to 4.23 billion minutes in the second quarter of this year -- a 8% gain from 3.9 billion in the second quarter of 2015, according to MoffettNathanson Research.

Mobile apps contributed 2.6 billion for mobile apps, up from 2.3 billion. The mobile Web was at 379 million (up from 352 million), and desktop minutes were at 1.23 billion, down slightly from 1.27 billion. 

“This is significant because it may very well mark the beginning of the end of a multi-year cycle of mobile-driven volume growth... it begs the question of whether CPM growth may soon take over as the primary drive for digital ad revenue growth,” writes Michael Nathanson, senior analyst of MoffettNathanson Research.

The best-positioned companies in the future? MoffettNathanson writes that Google and Facebook control seven of the most used apps in the U.S. -- nine out of top 15, according to comScore. Apple, Amazon, Pandora, Snapchat, and Pinterest are also in the top 15, with Twitter in 17th place.

MoffettNathanson says there were 132 apps with more than 5 million unique viewers in June 2016, up 7% from 123 a year ago. Twenty-eight of those had more than 20 million uniques, versus 27 a year ago. “There are now fewer properties consolidating more user share at the top.”

Magna Upgrades U.S. Ad Revenue Forecast

• by Steve McClellan@mp_mcclellan, Yesterday, 4:38 PM

Interpublic research arm Magna has upgraded its U.S. ad revenue forecast and now predicts that media owners net advertising revenues will grow 6.3% to $179 billion in 2016, the strongest growth rate since 2010.

The research unit had previously forecast 6.2% growth for the region, but made the upgrade following a strong first half and despite lower political ad-spend expectations.

Not counting the incremental ad sales generated this year by political and Olympics, ad market growth would be 4.4%.

In 2017, growth is expected to slow to 3.5%.

Magna reports that digital media ad sales will grow by 15% this year and 12% next year, while traditional media ad sales will decrease by 1.5% this year and 2.2% next year.

Digital advertising sales this year will equal TV ad dollars for the first time with both generating $68 billion, and a market share of 38.5%.

Social media ad sales are expected to rise 44% to nearly $16 billion, of which about $2.2 billion will be for social video ad formats.

National TV ad revenues are predicted to grow 3.2% this year, excluding political and Olympics, with growth slowing to 1.5% in 2017.

Entrepreneurs Need To Focus On The Right Skill Set

The Huffington Post

INFORM • INSPIRE • ENTERTAIN • EMPOWER 

10/04/2016 11:50 pm ET

Marty Zwilling Veteran Start-up Mentor; Executive

In my experience in large businesses as well as years of advising startups, I see far too much focus on product skills, and too little on people and process skills. In my view, this focus on the wrong skill set is the primary reason why over half of new businesses fail in the first five years, and only one out of a hundred startups get their requested funding from professional investors.

In fact, there is much evidence that the same principles separate success from mediocrity in most of the disciplines in business. I recognized this as I was reading a new book, “The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need,” by Anthony Iannarino, who is an international sales leader and expert on optimizing results. His focus is on sales, but I see the same skills needed for entrepreneurs.

His top eight required skill set elements for sales don’t even mention product skills, and match my view of the right skill set for successful entrepreneurs, with only a few priority changes:

Creating and sharing a vision. Storytelling and projecting a vision are foundational skills that are required from the first moment in starting a business. The old myth that “if we build it, they will come” has not worked for a long time. The best visions begin in the future, describe how to get there together, touch on emotions, and work in your values.




Diagnosing and understanding the customer problem. This means all business people, especially entrepreneurs, need to get beyond the presentations and the experts, to actively listen to real customers. They need to ask customers the difficult questions, and really understand costs versus benefits, as well as competitive alternatives.




Opening relationships and creating opportunities. Whereas providers used to control information, the Internet has given customers access to more information and more choices than ever. They demand interactive relationships with you, and depend on the relationships you have with their friends. Relationships are the new keys to opportunities.




Producing results with and through others. You can’t build a business or sell alone. You have to lead and motivate many others with the right skill set to make it happen. To do this, you call upon your storytelling, negotiating, and change-management skills, all the while demonstrating your unswerving accountability. It’s up to you to clear the way.




Asking for and obtaining commitments. Building a company and selling are all about gaining commitments. While it’s true that you can go too far too fast when asking for funding or asking for an order, all too often fear and timidity keeps entrepreneurs from going far enough fast enough. Offering more value is the key to a quicker close.




Negotiating and creating win-win deals. When dealing with customers or partners, only win-win deals make sense. It’s all about value for both parties, and good negotiation is highlighting value. Great entrepreneurs are able to think on their feet, and are always prepared. Highlight the points of agreement, rather than hammer on the differences.




Understanding business essentials and creating value. Product leadership alone might have been enough in the past, but today people are looking at a bigger picture. They want a business that is ethical, understands sustainability, and provides leadership that goes beyond profitability for shareholders. Value is far more than cost versus price.




Building consensus and helping others change. Consensus and change are hard. These require building a team that can work together, identify the obstacles to change, deal with conflicting interests, and overcome the challenges to change. Great entrepreneurs create and sell a compelling case for change, and lead that change.

Put simply, your personal and people skills are the difference that makes the difference, more so than the product or service you bring to the table. It takes discipline, initiative, a positive attitude, and the ability to communicate and be accountable to set your business apart from the million others that have equal access to your customers. Make them remember you and appreciate the added value.